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Fall 2018 Agenda

Evana Alam

Fall 2018 Agenda

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Session 1       9:30 am – 10:30 am

Classroom Conduct & Community Standards: A Workshop for De-Escalating Conflict and Helping Students in Crisis

 Presenter: Rachel Brown (Student Affairs) 
Room: 1.99 NB

As college officials, faculty members have an obligation to teach students about civil discourse; to enforce civil behavior on campus; and to give students the tools they need to maintain civility and respect towards others, even when others’ needs and desires are different from their own. This workshop will walk participants through real-life classroom scenarios involving difficult, argumentative, or unstable students, so when it happens in your classrooms, you can be prepared.

Increasing Student Participation and Mastery of Material through Collaborative Reading Assignments

 Presenter: Diana Moore (History)
Room: 1.101 NB

Many faculty strive to instill the principles of student-centered learning in their classroom but fall back on lectures after struggling to get students to read on their own, understand and master the material, and communicate that material effectively to each other. Through this workshop, faculty will experience and learn about the benefits of a collaborative reading assignment designed to facilitate student-centered learning and increase both the quantity and quality of in-class discussion. By assigning students individual chapters of a book to read and requiring a brief summary and response to that chapter (due the night before class), this assignment not only includes a low-stakes writing component, but also encourages students to become sources of knowledge rather than mere recipients of it and to learn from each other. It also allows students to see how authors build an entire book by connecting individual detailed examples back to larger arguments.

Panel from HSI Faculty Seminar

 Presenter: Gina Rae Foster (Teaching and Learning Center), et al                 
Room: 1.103 NB

 

Aligning Quantitative Reasoning in Statistics and Social Science Majors

 Presenter: Raymond Patton(Under Graduate Studies), Heath Grant(Math), Sandra Swenson(Sociology), Dante Tawfeeq(Sciences), Lila Kazemian(Sciences), Daryl Wout(Psychology), Leslie Chandrakantha(LPS)
Room: 1.105 NB  

What can we do to improve our students’ ability to carry over the quantitative reasoning skills they learn in math and statistics courses into their majors? Over the 2017-18 academic year, a group of faculty from John Jay’s Social Science, Math, and Sciences departments, supported by a Program Improvement Grant, met to discuss alignment between the quantitative reasoning needs of the college’s general education, math, and statistics curriculum and its social science majors. At this session, we will share the results of the group’s analysis, including the QR skills identified as necessary for social science students across disciplines, and how they align with the statistics and math curriculum. We will then provide an opportunity for networking, structured discussion, and planning to form connections between the college’s statistics courses and social science research methods courses. Faculty who teach courses involving statistics and social science research methods are particularly encouraged to attend.

Faculty Senate Technology Committee Roundtable 1: Planning to Teach Online? Getting Started & Getting Answers to Your Questions

 Presenter: C. Gabrielle Salfati and other members of the Faculty Senate Technology Committee and online teachers from Multiple disciplines
Room: 1.94 *MSRC

This round table session is designed for faculty new to online teaching, and those who want further information about the guidelines and technology resources available. It will provide an opportunity to hear faculty from different disciplines discuss the concepts and practicalities of designing and delivering courses online. Round table members will share their strategies and engage with questions that arise when building a new online course, addressing each of three problem areas: 1. Practicalities of developing an online course in different disciplines 2. Engaging your students through conceptualizing an online course 3. Engaging your students though building an engaging learning space online.

Library Gems to Enrich Your Teaching & Research: New Collections, Interactive Databases, and Streaming Videos

 Presenter: CEllen Sexton, Moureen Richards, Robin Davis (Library)
Room: 1.107 NB  

Supplement or replace your textbook with library resources! We will showcase new or little-known content collections and tools that you can use to augment your curriculum and engage your students, including an interactive demographics mapper, streaming videos, and primary source collections. We will also show you how to embed library instruction in Blackboard, and how to share library-licensed content with your students, including e-content discovered with OneSearch. To close, we will browse your favorite scholarly journals with the BrowZine app. Faculty from all departments will walk away with something new to explore.

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Session 2       10:45 pm – 11:45 pm

Encouraging student Research and Writing in the Humanities

 Presenter: Olivera Jokic (English)
Room: 1.99 NB

Faculty in the humanities often inspire students to begin thinking in new and daring ways, but even inspired students don’t often dare to take on research projects. Although such projects could consolidate the students’ knowledge about the value of humanities’ contribution to knowledge, students often assume their skills and experience could not sustain an entire project. This workshop will give an opportunity for faculty wishing to advise students’ research projects and honors theses in the humanities to have a conversation about pedagogical specificities of mentoring away from labs, groups, research subjects, and models of authority prevalent in other fields. How do we recognize students whose creativity, curiosity, and work habits could sustain a research project? How do we encourage them to define a doable project? How do we anticipate and speak to students’ insecurities in the process of completing the project, and encourage them to pursue a strong original interest?

Using Writing to Help Students Think, Organize and Prioritize

 Presenter: Andrea Balis (History)
Room: 1.101 NB

The demonstration looks at ways to help students understand how important what we often label as “low stakes” writing – that “To do” lists are ways of thinking, and organizing and prioritizing. Even though we scaffold assignments to help students understand the process of writing a paper, they see outlines, and thesis statements, and drafts as requirements, not as tools. What we label as low stakes writing, and which students toss off and never look at again, is actually using writing as a way of thinking. This kind of writing can help students connect what they know to what they are learning – to make their own learning conscious learning. The demonstration includes “in-class, low stakes” writing for participants, as well as suggestions for assignments and exercises.

Our HSI Identity and the Curriculum

 Presenter: Dara Byrne, LLS Chair or designee, AFR chair or designee, maybe Avi, maybe Ray secondarily (Undergraduate Studies)
Room: 1.103 NB

Research shows that a college’s curriculum is the single most significant factor in students’ identifying the campus as a positive climate for diversity. Yet, it also shows that “The voices of Latina/o students and other underrepresented groups have been largely excluded from the formal curricula at institutions of higher education, even at HSIs” (Garcia and Okhidoi, 2015). At this session, John Jay faculty will present examples of how other institutions of higher education have successfully built their curriculum to embrace their identity as a HSI. Please join us for a discussion of what our curriculum currently looks like with respect to the college’s HSI identity, and help us think through what it should look like and how the college can get there.

Using ePortfolio to Host Your OER Materials

 Presenter: Daniel Auld, PhD(Learning Technologies/SASP) and Vee Herrington, PhD (OER Librarian, Lloyd Sealy Library)
Room: 1.105 NB

With textbook costs increasing over 800% in the past 10 years, there is increased awareness about openness, sharing and equity in education…thus, the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement was born! OERs are materials used for education where restrictions of traditional copyright are non-existent and accessible for free. This presentation focuses on ePortfolio as a platform, also free to our students and faculty, to host OER courses. ePortfolio allows for creation of dynamic, interactive web sites private to students only or publicly available. Students learn to navigate your ePortfolio site and can construct their own ePortfolios to demonstrate learning from your courses. This fall, we release NEW Digication, the updated look and feel to our existing ePortfolio sites. Join us to see examples of ePortfolio as an OER solution and begin creating your own resource sites. We will also share details for grant-funded OER curricular and professional development opportunities for 2018-19.

Faculty Senate Technology Committee Roundtable 2: Problem Solving in an Online Course

 Presenter: Maggie Smith, Heath Grant, other members of Faculty Senate Technology Committee and online teachers from multiple disciplines (TBA)
Room: 1.94 *MSRC

This session is designed to provide an open framework for discussion of issues and problems that are frequently experienced during a semester while teaching an online course. It is meant for faculty with online teaching experience and will focus on student performance and evaluation issues within online classes. Roundtable members will share their strategies and engage with questions in each of the problem areas listed below. 1. Sustaining student engagement in an online course 2. How much student interaction is desirable in an online course? 3. What are the benefits and challenges of asking online students to work in groups? 4. How can an instructor manage assignments and deadlines so as to accommodate varying student schedules and life commitments?

Burrowing Under the Paywall: Sharing Research Papers in the Real World

Presenter: Ellen Sexton(Library)
Room: 1.107 NB  

An exploration of some tools for sharing journal articles. We’ll talk about how research papers are actually being shared, and why some methods are problematic. To model good behavior for students we will focus on legal sharing. We’ll use Google Scholar, browser plug-ins and the library’s discovery layer to find free versions of published research articles, and explore how authors can help improve discovery by claiming their ORCID, editing their Google Scholar profile, and posting legally permissible versions of their work on a pre-print server or repository. We will look at the growing numbers of freely accessible reputable pre-print servers and repositories, and the discovery tools that search them. We will conclude with a pitch to authors to consciously keep a copy of their preprint to post on CUNY’s institutional repository.

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LUNCH  12:00 pm – 12:45 pm

Student Cafeteria, 2nd Floor NB

 

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Session 3      2:30 – 3:30

What are Best Practices in Mentoring Student? A discussion

Presenter: Nathan Lents (Honors), Sivia Mazzula (Psychology), Richard Perez (English)   
Room: 1.99 NB  

We often hear how important mentoring is to students’ success, and we know this to be true instinctively if not empirically. But what is involved in mentoring students, and how do we know when we are doing it well? Three recipients of the college’s Outstanding Scholarly Mentoring Award invite participants to join in a discussion of what might be “best practices” in mentoring students at John Jay.

Using Literature in Non-Literature Classes

Presenter: Robin J. Kempf (Public Management) and Kathleen Collins (Library)
Room: 1.101 NB  

Using fiction as a pedagogical tool – in any discipline – can facilitate understanding of complex or abstract ideas by presenting them in simulated environments that are accessible and relevant to students’ learning. Research shows that using literature to explore course concepts in a language in which students are comfortable can promote active learning and a satisfying teaching experience at a low cost for students. This session explores the use of fiction in the higher education classroom. After reviewing pedagogical literature about how fiction can be a tool to advance learning, especially in the majors and programs available at John Jay, presenters will provide examples of how literature can be incorporated into a course. Then, presenters will provide sources that instructors could use to identify books for their classes. Finally, a new platform on the John Jay Library website will be introduced, which will be used to crowd source ideas for fiction appropriate for John Jay classes.

Language Use and Language Identity among Bilingual Latinx Students at John Jay

Presenter: Aída Martínez-Gómez (Modern Languages); Eloísa Monteoliva-García (Literatures)
Room: 1.103 NB

This presentation aims to enhance our understanding of how our bilingual Latinx students feel about language and how that may influence their academic performance. In the first part of the session, participants and presenters will analyze narratives written by students about their language experiences in English and Spanish since childhood, including as family translators and interpreters, collected over the past three years at John Jay. Our goal will be to identify their self-reported strengths and weaknesses and the emotional impact that these experiences had in their development, and to reflect upon the impact they may have in both the construction of their identities and college experience. In the second part, we will discuss initiatives to incorporate these findings to the classroom to better support these students and ensure their academic success, not only in terms of communication skills, but also regarding their emotional and interpersonal skills, the construction of their identity, and their future career goals.

Teaching and Learning of Critical Skills in the John Jay Justice Core

Presenter: Raymond Patton (Director, Educational Partnerships and General Education), Amy Green (English), Melinda Powers (Africana Studies), Crystal Endsley (Communication and Theater Arts)
Room: 1.103 NB

How do we ensure that our students – native and transfer alike – are up to speed on crucial skills like writing, critical thinking, and information literacy as they enter the upper level of their studies? In response to assessment data indicating that John Jay students are not developing these abilities at the rate that we expect, a multi-disciplinary team reworked the learning goals of the 300 Justice Core of the general education curriculum to emphasize precisely these skills; this revision was approved by College Council in the spring of 2018. Please join us for a discussion of the revised learning outcomes and how we arrived at them – and just as importantly, for an opportunity to share ideas with colleagues on how to design and teach a course to facilitate student learning of these skills. Especially recommended for faculty teaching 300 level general education courses or interested in doing so.

John Jay Online Tools and Resources for New and Experienced Online Instructors

Presenter: Judith Cahn and Helen Keier (John Jay Online)
Room: 1.99 NB

The John Jay Online Faculty Orientation is an online resource aimed at acclimating both new and existing instructors to teaching online at John Jay College using Blackboard. As faculty work through the sections of the site, they will find information on support options, Professional Development and Pedagogical Support, a brief introduction to online teaching, and an introduction to Blackboard. The Online Faculty Orientation can serve as a tool for on boarding new online instructors and as a just-in-time resource for those who may already have some online and Blackboard experience. During the session, we will present an overview of the new Online Faculty Orientation, a demonstration of the content within the Orientation, take questions from faculty regarding teaching online at John Jay College and with Blackboard, and preview upcoming functionality introduced in our next upgrade.

 

Understanding Research and Teaching Opportunities with John Jay’s Research Centers

Presenter: Jeff Butts, Preeti Chauhan, Ann Jacobs, David Kennedy (Office for the Advancement of Research) 
Room: 1.107 NB                

John Jay’s Research Centers help advance the scholarly mission of the college, significantly contribute to the external grant portfolio of the institution, and offer opportunities for faculty to collaborate on research or teaching projects. Come learn more about the mission and activities currently underway at our largest centers and explore opportunities to collaborate with these centers. Join us in a discussion with the National Network for Safe Communities, the Research & Evaluation Center, the Misdemeanor Justice Project, and the Prisoner Reentry Institute.

Get Ready for John Jay’s Faculty Development Day August 24, 2017

Allison Pease

A John Jay tradition, Faculty Development Day is a day we set aside before the semester to share effective teaching practices, renew our commitment to our mission, find support for handling student challenges, and continue to enhance our work lives.

The Fall 2017 FDD has 18 different panels held over three one-hour sessions, from 11 am – 3:15 pm, with a one-hour lunch from 12-1 pm in the Student Cafeteria, 2nd Floor NB.

11:00 – 12:00 pm         Session 1, Classrooms on first floor NB

12:00 – 1:00 pm           Lunch, Student Cafeteria

1:00 – 2:00 pm             Session 2, Classrooms on first floor NB

2:15 – 3:15 pm             Session 3, Classrooms on first floor NB

4:00 – 5:00 pm             New Student Convocation, Gerald Lynch Theatre